NBC Writer: It’s “Dangerous” to Speak Spanish in the Age of Trump

According to a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, writing a special bit of stupidity for NBC News, it “is dangerous to speak Spanish in public in Trump’s America.”

To make this absurd claim, Gustavo Arellano cites a handful of anecdotes about the Border Patrol stopping people who were overheard corresponding in Spanish and then a second handful of stories about people getting harassed for same. Liberals: We believe in data-based science…unless it’s more convenient to just cherry-pick a few stories we heard through the grapevine!

Remarkably, though, this is not the most asinine claim that Arellano makes in the course of this opinion piece. He also claims that “Spanish, not English, is the most all-American language and has been for centuries.”

After making up some stuff about Spanish-speaking students being put in the “retarded” class for using their dominant language, Arellano proudly makes a claim that would seem to undermine his other one.

“The United States already has the second-largest population of Spanish-speakers in the world, after Mexico,” he writes. “And if current trends continue, we’ll beat our south-of-the-border frenemies by 2050.”

(Yay…)

Assuming that Arellano is correct about that statistic, wouldn’t that indicate that it is, indeed, not at all dangerous to speak Spanish in America? Is Spanish our uncrowned official language…or is it only spoken by oppressed kids who are classified as special-needs by heartless white teachers? Are Hispanics getting ready to take over as the dominant minority in America…or are they being systematically exterminated and deported by cruel Trump supporters? Are Whites running roughshod over everyone else in this fascist country…or are they an irrelevant, dying group of fuddy duddies who won’t be around in another 15 years?

And what’s this again about Spanish being the most “all-American language”?

“Just re-read your history books,” he advises. “Spaniards had already established vibrant colonies from St. Augustine to Santa Fe by the time the English set up Jamestown in 1607. Previous generations of Americans knew to learn at least some Spanish when they moved into what’s now the Southwest United States, when it was still part of Mexico. And the lingo of the most American icon of them all, the cowboy, is mucho mucho with Spanish roots, from buckaroo (from vaquero— cowboy) to vamoose (from “vamos”—let’s go) to that most red-blooded car of them all, the Mustang (from the Spanish word for stray animals).”

Man, we’ve seen some weak cases made for some absurd arguments before, but this might be the worst pairing we’ve seen in a long time. By Arellano’s own logic, Spanish is easily trumped by any language spoken by any Native American tribe. But please, do try again, hermano.

Arellano finishes up with this angry, spiteful conclusion: “So get with the program, racists, and learn Spanish. And for the record: when we speak Español, we’re not talking about you. We don’t even care about you.”